A Brief Interlude of Non-Obamacare, Cap and Tax Upliftenment

Last week, President Obama received a letter from ten Senators, most of them liberals and all of them Democrats, who are looking for reassurance that the Cap and Trade legislation pending in the Senate contains language “to ensure that manufacturers do not bear the brunt of our climate change policy.”

That’s interesting. We’ve been reassured that Cap and Trade has been designed by the Smartest People in the World to avoid penalizing domestic manufacturers in terms of global competitiveness, but here we have Democratic Senators from states like Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia who are less than sanguine with all the sweet talk.

“We must not engage in a self-defeating effort that displaces greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them and displaces U.S. jobs rather than bolstering them,” wrote the Senators.

Thus their demand that “a longer-term border adjustment mechanism”—a euphemism for tariffs—”is a vital part of this package to prevent the relocation of carbon emissions and industries” to countries that aren’t as foolish as to impose a similar tax. …

When the House passed its cap-and-tax bill in June, [Obama] warned against a carbon tariff by saying “I think we need to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals.” But these 10 Senate Democrats are saying explicitly that protectionism is the price of their support. So Mr. Obama can opt to impose a huge carbon tax and drive jobs overseas, or he can impose the tax along with a tariff, and kick off a trade war. Better to call the whole thing off.

This can mean only one thing in log-rolling Washington. Bring Home the Bacon, Baby!